"After launch, we learned again what fans of the series expect from the series and a Ninja Gaiden game," Team Ninja head Yosuke Hayashi said when introducing Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor’s Edge. "We feel we focused too much on getting new action game fans and perhaps not enough on the fans who have supported the series for so long. Now, we have heard those voices and know very well what fans of the franchise expect from a Ninja Gaiden game and we’re ready to start again. That’s Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor’s Edge for Wii U."

I admit, I was skeptical that Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor’s Edge was just a gorier port of Ninja Gaiden 3. Team Ninja changed my mind when I played the game with Ayane, a character added for the Wii U version. Ayane’s mission takes place on Day 2 in Paris where she is getting massage. A mercenary storms in and points his machine gun at Ayane’s head then moves down to her… um… chest and attempts pulls her towel down a tad. Ayane, in a cutscene, quickly slaughters the gunman and after a few more cinematic kills the game gives control to the player.

The first thing I noticed about Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor’s Edge is that the enemies are more aggressive and they won’t plead for their lives anymore. Director Fumihiko Yasuda confirmed that they removed cowering enemies from Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor’s Edge. Enemies feel "smarter" since you can’t repeat the same attack pattern and they will gang up on a player instead of waiting for you to kill them. The "steel & bone" quick time kills are gone. Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor’s Edge has dismemberment instead.

While I breezed through the first wave of enemies, the third group finished Ayane off. One enemy who lost his leg crawled towards Ayane and self destructed taking off about 1/3 of Ayane’s life. Ouch. I changed my tactics a bit and used ninpo to recover Ayane’s life much earlier after I died the first time. At least for Ayane’s missions, Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor’s Edge is challenging. Yasuda who was watching everyone play had a wry smile when he saw a player die. I asked him if Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor’s Edge would have difficulty levels for new players and he said the game does. However, if you play Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor’s Edge at a lower difficulty you’ll earn less karma. Players can use karma to unlock moves like the Guillotine Throw, the Flying Swallow technique, and more ninpo.

Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor’s Edge will have free downloadable content after the game launches. Hayashi didn’t reveal the content, but gave hints saying there was "quite a bit" and "series fans are going to love it."

Steel-on-bones didn't disapear, they just changed its function. And SoB attacks are not QTEs, jeez…

I still think that Razor's Edge was what they intended to do from the start and that they kept it under their sleeve in case NG3 was badly received… there are just too many changes and additions for them to be improvised.

In the trailer, I don't quite understand what happens at 1:35… it's like Ryu switched places with his enemy or something… ò.Ô

I'll be happy if they actually did get rid of SoB. I hope they did improve the combat but I don't know if we can know from this guys preview. Maybe they just turned off the auto dodge or whatever feature.

Also turning the SoB into a grab-counter is fine with me. Anything that adds a layer to the gameplay is good to take. The trailer also indicates a few new moves, like the boomerang scythe, and combat looks a lot faster overall… so yeah, the improvements seem to be pretty deep.

-There are new combo branches for all of Ryu's basic weapons, so it doesn't feel like a cheap copy-paste of the NG2 weapons. The Lunar is shorter and more staff-like than the flail-styled combo machine it was in NG2. It still has bloody fast combos, though, and some of the newer branches are damn useful. The Blade of the Archfiend has a cool "quick drop", whereby pressing light-strong-strong attacks result in an quick Underworld Drop. Sexy.

-The new abilities given to Ryu change-up the free-form possibilities nicely. The Cicada Surge (teleport counter) is much easier to perform now. He has a new 360 shuriken attack, and while it doesn't do much damage, it can be canceled into at virtually any time. It's really sweet. The hitbox for the guillotine throws are still finicky, so the move isn't as useful as it used to be.

-The Grip of Murder works differently. Rather than slowing Ryu down and forcing him to fight with a limited moveset against slow, stupid enemies, Ryu is transported to an ethereal mental arena, where his health is constantly being drained. Killing enemies will restore his HP, so Ryu kill enemies quickly and constantly to offset the HP loss. The one in the demo is actually quite challenging, as it pits you against several waves of BS Ninja.

-The TAC Ninja are back (the ones with the Uzis).

-Ryu's recovery-frames have been fixed.

-They brought back wall-stuns and enemy-only launchers, expanded the combo lists, give you new abilities to free-form with, Steel-on-bone functions as a grab-counter now, etc. Some of the enemies are even getting tweaked. Like I said earlier, the Alchemist mini-bosses fight with sabers now, like the Regent.

-Ayane plays like her Sigma 2 counterpart, but with modified combos and heavy-attack charges. Her incendiary shuriken come out very fast, so you can end combos (or open combos) with them very effectively. Her short attack reach makes it very hard to chain SOB finishers.

-Some enemies are much easier to SOB than others, and the demo makes this apparent. Terrorist Grunts are by far the easiest to SOB. Dagger-wielding heavies too, but their grab has invulnerability, so missing the SOB counter will damn-near always get you grabbed. Kukri/beret mercenaries are next in terms of ease. Black Spider Ninjas have quick grabs, and the SOB window is much tighter as a result.

-Costumes are in. You buy them in the Skill Menu the same way you upgrade Ninpo, weapons and skills (with Karma). With Classic Blue, Fiend Ryu and Muscle Dragon as costume options. Ayane had more.

That vid was almost unbearable to watch. Lol the guy playing was absolutely horrible, they could at least have someone who has a remote clue of what they're doing play the game for gameplay footage purposes. Anyways, the game is looking quite promising so far. It's just too bad that I have little intention of buying a Wii U just for this game alone....

Making a new Dead or Alive game is a careful balance for director Yohei Shimbori. On one hand, he wants to create a title that serious tournament players can compete in, but at the same time, he wants to create a broad, inviting "entertainment" experience that captures a wide audience.

But he now has to make sure to doublecheck that against what the series fans think.

Backlash
During the development of Dead or Alive 5, Team Ninja learned a very hard lesson in player feedback. Ninja Gaiden 3 was released, and series fans were extremely outspoken in their disappointment with the title.

While Shimbori didn't work on Ninja Gaiden 3, he says that "everybody at the studio was pretty shocked" when the news rolled in. "It really made us take another look at the game and why that reaction was there," he says.

"One of the things that I learned was the power of having a series behind you, and what it means to be part of a series. There are existing fans out there, and you have to think about the people who have supported the series for so long, and you want to make sure that the game that you make appeals to them first, and satisfies those fans first."

"As a director, I really try to take fan feedback into account. I really try to keep an open mind," Shimbori says. That, married with some serious reflection on how the studio develops games, made a "really good set" of criteria for moving forward.

In fact, he says, "I've been looking at feedback for the last three years, and honestly, it hasn't changed a lot." Players want cool, unique characters, entertaining stages, and a balanced core gameplay system.

And while "surface level stuff" has changed in the seven years since the last numbered game in the series, Dead or Alive 4 -- an Xbox 360 near-launch title -- was released, Shimbori believes games, at their core, have not really changed so much over the course of the generation.

When he sits down with his team to design a new game, he says, "I still think of what players will want from this experience. When players play this game, what are they going to take away from it? What will they get excited about, what are they really going to have a lot of fun with? That's the core of entertainment, and that's the entertainment experience that we are trying to give to players, and we think that players are still looking for that entertainment experience."

Focusing on the Game Itself
"Other companies have focused on aspects outside of the game to try and get causal players and get other people in," says Shimbori. "We've really tried to keep the entertainment value focused within the core game itself -- to merge those two and keep it focused on the core aspects."

That's how he plans to "break out of the fighting game box" in the words of his boss, Team Ninja head Yosuke Hayashi, who recently told Gamasutra he feels that genre can be a trap.

"So you have those blockbuster stages -- that's just entertainment value," says Shimbori. "We have cool characters, blockbuster stages, and that spectacle, and that sense of entertainment as well. That's what sets it apart and opens it up to others."

Being too static, however, does have its dangers. "Certain games, maybe they haven't changed so much," Shimbori says. "You can see in them that fans will leave the fold, if that new, fresh entertainment experience isn't there."

What the Fans Want
The Ninja Gaiden 3 feedback did have one surprising effect on the development of Dead or Alive 5, Shimbori says. "We were getting feedback from the overseas offices to tone down the sexuality -- to tone down the sexiness of the game, and of the characters," he remembers. But once feedback from fans playing the demo that was included with Ninja Gaiden 3 came in, those plans changed.

"We actually got a lot of feedback from people who were playing it, saying, 'We want bigger breasts. Make the characters more like that.' That was kind of surprising."

"There's definitely still room for having sexualized aspects," Shimbori concludes. "If you have a solid fighting game system there, there's nothing wrong with having beautiful characters as a layer on top of that -- that's another layer of entertainment that there's a need for. If there wasn't a need for it, people wouldn't have responded to the alpha demo like they did, and send us feedback."